looking for OS for toshiba satellite 2530cds
 

Howdy, glad to find this forum!

I have a Toshiba Satellite 2530CDS that I want to put linux on to hack scripts, play with perl, mes with code with. I am an analyst type and deepening some hack/program skills. This laptop has Win98SE and is a pig.

it is a MMX 333 with 96RAM, 4 gig drive, USB slot, infared, 2 pcmcia slots, floppy and a cd drive. i am pulling lists out of system information on it as i type this and the USB will be my main sneaker net on the thing. i do not have a net work at home. (although i have a 486 box and a 386 laptop that boot and need a job) also... (chuckle) my old 040 colormac with 9 inch screen still runs!

i understand toshiba varys a lot with what it stuffs into its machines, i dont need robust gui, just notepad and code hacks

thanks for helping the new guy :study:

You could go with pretty much any distro. You are probably going to want to disable (or not install) as many extra services and such as you can. Therefor a distro that gives you precise control over the install process would be best.

As for a nice light-weight gui desktop. There are many of course but my favorite is XFCE 4. Check it out here:
http://xfce.org/index.php

will give it a look at.

i have old version of red had in a book that is same vintage of my laptop... the book is 'using linux third edition' by QUE and has in it REDHAT(kernal 2.0.18), SLACKWARE, & CALDERA that the media is still unopened.. a co-worker had it on his shelf and untouched.....

i may start with what is in the book ....

will look at your site suggestions

i did pull a txt file off of win98 about system that lists all dll, all versions of hardware and drivers and items in the laptop... what else should i do prior to reformating the old laptop? should I strip everything out and leave existing os in there and partition? or just set up some DOS boot disks and reformat the whole thing to start clean?

:newbie: questions hardcore... i know...

thanks in advance

For best compatibility you would be best off with a newer version of a distro...especially for a laptop. With the hardware you listed you should be able to run any distro available. Something based on the 2.4.x kernel would be fine. I have had the best results on laptops with SuSE but I am sure the others are good nowadays too (Mandrake, Red Hat Fedora, Debian, the list goes on....). As for SuSE you can do a network install of their distro for free...just download and burn the network install CD from one of the mirrors (I dont have exact locations). Info on how to do this is available here:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/README.FTP

Fedora is available from Red Hat's webpage and Debian is available from debian.org

If you want to test how compatible your laptop is with Linux without installing anything just download and burn a copy of Knoppix. It is a live-distribution in that you simply put the CD in your machine and restart and Linux runs without you having to install it or change anything on your hard drives. It is a good place to start as it will automatically configure your hardware for Linux so that you can see what works fine and what may need some tweaking. You can get Knoppix here:
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-old-en.html

If you are worried about losing info on your Win98 I recommend trying knoppix as it will not damage any of that. I recommend backing up anything you dont want to lose before you do a full install of Linux. After you have tried knoppix if you still want to go Linux and you dont need Win98 anymore you might as well wipe the machine and start from scratch. The installer for any Linux distro will do all of this for you as part of the install if you tell it to.

Good luck!

will try the load from cd, i think, after thinker time on the thinker, that i will load this ancient kernal on a 486 that has been sitting and i think? still boots and has nothing on it then reformat the laptop and reload 98 to it real lean with only an old vbstudio 6 suite leave it for old vb and old browser testing...

kind of getting stoked to have these different specific boxes... for test/hack on.

:study: :Pengy:


thanxs

Yesterday I tried Knoppix, I got it from Linuxformat Magazine, along with thousands of packages in the dvd distro.
I tried the bootable cd rom before I committed to actually installing it onto my Toshiba 2410. It worked beautifully. The only thing that did not work is the linmodem, but that is another story, I have the pcmcia modem working just fine.
this box has all the bells and whistles, and knoppix detected everything, including the linmodem. total uptime was about 20 minutes.

the knoppix bootable cd will work on most computers and gets up and running in about 5 minutes.
and it can also help to repair faulty windows installations, it will not change any settings and will auto mount all drives, and partitions. you must have a bootable cdrom to use it, but there are other ways if you do not.

I have had so many trial and errors with caldera, suse, RH 9, that I dumped my suse 7, RH 9, and installed knoppix to the hard drive.

I liked suse, and RH, but I really like the simplicity of knoppix, I do not enjoy countless hours of trial and error just trying to get a device working, time is better spent actually having my computer do what I want, instead of what it is not supposed to do.

so if i go to the local zine shop and find what is on the shelf for linuxformat mag? I should get a cd with the knoppix? .... hmmm will go take a look see since my dial up is 24 - 26 Kbps and stinkin Qwest does not this nieghborhood wired up.... for DSL


will do that... look for linux mag with knoppix on media.

that is a good idea upchuck

thanks...

and have any of you noticed google has a linux and a BSD specific search spot? found it last night... under OPTIONS, special searches,

http://www.google.com/options/specialsearches.html

as an afterthought, there are two LXF51 issues for March 2004, one has knoppix on a dvd, and an issue with three cd-roms that do not have knoppix, the latter has other trial and test distros that work, but the knoppix distro is by far is the best at detecting hardware, and has a full and simple installable for those whom want to commit.

The best part was I repaired my "broken windows', using knoppix, Microsoft's had said I needed to re-format and reinstall.

i got a copy of LXF53 ... april issue of linuxformat... i should try to call a small mag shop to see if they have lxf52 or 51 or if they already dumped them....... :-(

anyway.... this is fun, LIKE LOOKING FOR EASTER EGGS ..